Dog Person - Nov 30 2025

 

Dog Person

Nov 30 2025

He called me a dog person.

I felt both flattered and seen.

Not a cat person, at least,

which I don’t so much admire

as am baffled by.

Suffice it to say

I don’t get cats.

Or is it “dog person”

not as descriptor, but as a noun;

a hybrid, or chimera

with a dog’s head and human body

  — a cynocephalus?

Or have I got that turned around?

Wouldn’t a canine body and human brain

be more ideal,

athleticism and smarts

all in one.

But then again, aren’t dogs more sensible,

less neurotic than us?

A simple creature

who lives in the moment

and quickly forgets,

an enthusiast

obsessed with walks, balls, and food.

  … Mostly food.

Who needs higher thought

and complicated relationships

when you can be man’s best friend?

A come-to-life plush toy

undisturbed 

by the state of the world,

who never pays the rent

commutes to work

or cleans up her mess,

and whose soft brown puppy-eyes

can get her out of anything.

Who needn’t even dress.

Although that human body

would probably want to be clothed.

A man-dog

embarrassed by his nakedness,

not lithe enough to lick.

I sent the following note to my brother when I shared to first draft of this poem. It’s as good an explanation as any, so I’m reproducing it here:

 In your email containing the WSJ article about ugly dogs, you called me a “dog person”. Absolutely!  But the term also struck me in its most literal sense. So I couldn’t resist quickly reeling off this little bit of nonsense. I know you’re not a fan of poetry, but thought you might get a kick out of it nevertheless.

Such a thing actually exists. At least in mythology. There’s the cynocephalus of medieval folklore. And the Egyptians had a god named Anubis: the jackal-headed god of mummification, embalming, cemeteries, and the afterlife, often depicted as a man with a black jackal head symbolizing decay, fertile Nile soil, and rebirth.